


The More Things Change

by BloodiedRose



Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dysfunctional Relationships, M/M, Multi, Murder, Post-Series, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-22 12:19:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4835099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BloodiedRose/pseuds/BloodiedRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Long after their original New York has fallen to dust, Henry and Adam find themselves walking amongst old friends with new lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The More Things Change

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has taken me a very long time to write. For an OTP my Henry and Adam muse is extremely stubborn. Many of the main characters appear in this fic, but for most it is only a passing mention so I did not feel it warranted tagging each appearing character. Also, Adam gives me opportunities to write about Caesar. For this he is awesome. 
> 
> One day I will not use the Major Character Death warning. Today is not that day.

i.

Henry was not aware of the current beliefs of philosophers. He supposed that the leading theory regarding the universe was that each person, each event, was caused by a specific combination of specific particles and actions. Soon, the universe would run out of new combinations, and would begin running through the old ones. A cycle, they called it. The universe repeating itself.

It had been Adam to notice the literal writing on the wall. Not in Rome this time. Rome was an echo of dust in long forgotten history. A history that only Adam could remember. Henry could see the loneliness, when Adam realised that he was the only one that knew this empire, that he was an old relic of an age obliterated from memory. Those nights, Adam would tell Henry of the world, drawing maps of fallen cities onto Henry’s skin.

The words had been painted in bright red on the brick. Adam had let go of Henry’s hand, stepping forward as if in a trance. He had reached up, touched the letters. A call to arms, to save the people from a tyrant called Caesar.

“Brutus, to continue the family tradition and kill the evil King…”

It had been all that was needed for Adam to take it upon himself and prove that inside him remained a decent man. Inside him remained a part that loved Caesar. A combination of the two, and there was nothing else that Adam could have done. If it was one thing that the two would learn, it was that no matter the world, there were some parts of a person that would never change.

And if it was inevitable that Adam would try, it was inevitable that he would fail, also. That was what they told themselves. It was easier to say there was nothing they could have done, than to say they just didn't try hard enough. It didn't keep Adam from sobbing in Henry’s arms, voice hitching beneath the roars of rioters out the window. The first piece of emotion Henry had truly seen in Adam’s face. He admired its beauty.

The people would later murder Brutus, the rising sun shining on his corpse hanging from the tower of the senate. Caesar would be made a god of the people. Henry would take Adam’s hand and lead him away from the city, on a train to take them as far away as possible. Behind them, Octavius and Cleopatra readied for war. Soon, the empire would be born, and it would fall. A blink of an eye. It did not matter to them.

ii.

They stood together, looking out to the sprawling city that was once New York. Lights and buildings danced above the clouds, a sea of dancing sparks fading into the stars and endless nights. A million New Yorks since the one they met in, fought in, fell in. A thousand New Yorks since the one they fell in love in.

Henry would not definitively say it was love. Not in the way he had loved before, not in the way he had loved since. It was a relationship of equals, except it could never be. Adam was so ancient now, bones carved in the sands of time and blood flowing with the rubble of the world that once was. He would always be more than Henry.

Like the universe, they were a cycle. Drifting in and out of the world, in and out of their roles. In and out of each other. When they had first met, Henry had been determined that he would never become like Adam. Henry would never lose himself so much as to become alien to the world around him. But he had, a downward spiral sparked by plunging that syringe into Adam (no, earlier, with a scalpel sinking into soft flesh). He had fallen, driven to the brink just as Adam was pulled back into life, into love. A current of waves that drew them out away from society and then thrust them back into it again. It had been a long time, a very long time, before they found themselves standing together at the shore.

They had clung to each other, adrift in the world that was moving faster than either of them could cope with. Gripping each other tightly as people lived and died and were lost before they could ever truly know them. It had become difficult to even try, to think of the people around them as little more than fireflies, blinking in and out of a fleeting existence. Heartache could only withstand so much despair before even it failed and gave birth to apathy. There was no reason to tie themselves to the brief instances of mortals, not now they had each other. But sometimes, they still tried.

It was the one thing certain in the fluctuating universe. They could leave for no matter how long, give themselves to numerous lovers, live countless lives. And yet they would always return, after years or decades or centuries. They would find each other again, a piece of their hearts permanently intertwined. Henry could feel Adam with every ache of his scar. Not the original one, but the one he had gained from the subway.

“It did nothing.”  
“It gave me a mark. Nothing else has done that, Adam. Nothing.”

Adam had never let Henry return the favour. Henry understood. It was a terrifying thing, to be able to pass through the universe as if it was air, life times echoing around you without staining you, and to then give that to another. Let another place a marking on your skin. Adam had spent so long alone, his reservations would never permit such intimacy. And it felt right this way. Adam had shaped so much of what Henry became, it felt right to have his signature etched into the painting. A mark that could thrum beneath possessive fingertips in a loving caress.

iii.

Henry had many a strange moment in his lifetime. He had thought waking nude in an ocean, after he had been shot and thrown from a ship, would forever remain the pinnacle of that strangeness. Nothing could have prepared him to see his son and wife drinking coffee together as the bustling crowds tried to block out the pouring sun from the window behind them. Except it was the wrong wife.

Nora sat contently, sipping her coffee while Abe spoke animately in front of her. Nora was barely a young woman, a similar age to when she and Henry first met. Abe seemed the same age as when he returned home from Afghanistan.

They looked remarkably content, history books peeking out of Abe’s bag while Nora drummed her fingers on a biology textbook. University students, it seemed, ready to burst into the world and show to it all the experience and wisdom they had accumulated over the course of their lives.

Henry had to swallow down the urge to weep. Before him was his boy, his beloved child that he had not seen in so long. The ever present ache in his bones swelled into flood of pain that threatened to swallow him whole.

Nora checked her wristwatch and said something, and they both gathered their things. They brushed past him, and all Henry could plead was don’t go. Not yet. But his throat would not open and his lips would not move, and when he finally managed to say Abraham’s name, they were gone.

Henry was relieved that he had someone to help him drown his sorrows. That night, he and Adam drank until they could have swum in the liquor and then continued to drink. Adam did not ask why, he simply understood. And later, he held a sobbing Henry on the river bank.

“I miss my son.”

iv.

It amused Adam endlessly that it was a lovely summer day in which they met Detective Martinez, when she snapped handcuffs around their wrists and forced them into the back of a police car. Instead of a subway crash, it was a shipwreck, and as the only survivors Henry and Adam were of course the main suspects.

The New York precinct was almost entirely unchanged. Superficially yes, it was lifetimes away from the old brick building that it had once been. Light poured in from the tall glass windows, turning it away from the grim centre of horrific crimes into the ‘beacon of justice’ it had been dubbed by the press. But its heart, the only thing that truly mattered, had remained steadfast.

Detective Martinez was furious in her questioning, while Detective Hanson took the more relaxed approach. Lucas bounded in like the over enthusiastic puppy dog that Henry had always known he was, handing over exonerating evidence that forced Lieutenant Reece to to order their release. Henry felt a surge in pride that, in spite of Lucas’s career change from morgue assistant to lab technician, he remained profoundly good at his job.

It was almost identical to the world that Henry had once inhabited, though Jo’s wedding ring glinted from her finger instead of her neck despite erring towards her late forties. And maybe it was for that reason, the knowledge that their lives were happy, that when he found pressing evidence he sent it to the Detective and then walked away.

v.

No matter the lifetime, the cycles that passed, or the combinations the universe threw together, it could only ever have been Abigail. The first and only woman to truly come between them, and she had to sweep into their lives again. With her intelligence and heart and everything that made her Henry’s oh so perfect wife.

It had been Adam that met her. Standing in the rain, waiting for the new form of public transport to arrive and return him home. She had been struggling with her umbrella, her styled blonde hair being ruined as the rain pelted down and her only protection turned inside out.

“Here,” Adam said, and he covered them both with his umbrella. She smiled up at him, gratefully, and forced the umbrella back into its original position before it was blown out again.  
“These umbrellas aren't nearly as sturdy as the ones back home,” Abigail complained, popping the umbrella once again into its place.

Their transport arrived and both moved forward, water droplets rolling down as if it was them who created the rain. Both moved towards nearby seats though the carriage was empty, and Abigail placed her traitorous umbrella on top of her handbag.

“Please you must tell me,” Adam said, forgoing his honey soaked Lewis Farber personality that he had been using with his current job. “How is England? It’s been an awful long time since I've met anyone from home.”

Abigail prattled along the ride with tales of an England alien to any that he had grown accustomed to. Yet, the nostalgia in her voice made him long for the public baths and overcrowded markets filled with angry plebeians and theatres filled with even angrier senators.

They reached Adam’s destination and he promptly took his leave, with social conversation, a joke, insincere friendliness as expected from the polite and the proud.  
“I guess I will see you tomorrow,” Abigail said. Adam tipped his hat, and left.

It was true, he thought as he began to walk. Abigail worked with him, went home the same route as him. It would only be a matter of time before she and Henry met, and Henry was fully submerged into the fog he had existed in since encountering the shade of his son. Anywhere in the world, and she came to his practice.

The knife had been easy to slip into his coat. Poor Abigail had not even noticed it, until it was embedded into her stomach.

vi.

“You killed her!” Henry moaned, tears overflowing from his eyes. It was not the gaze of a man wrought with fury, but with despair. _I trusted you_ remained unspoken.  
“Did you really want to watch someone die again? Are you really so _masochistic_ as to put yourself through this again?” Of course he was. Sentimental to the point of heartbreak, dear Henry.

A sound vaguely like a wail, and he was falling to the floor, the weight of Henry on top of him at first more noticeable than the dagger in his chest. Adam felt blood rising in his throat. Henry was sobbing above him, voice hitching with every breath. They had never tested the theory on Adam before. He had never thought of his gods as merciful, but he hoped they were now.

 _Don’t let me die. Henry can’t survive on his own._ Grant me this. _I have given you plenty a sacrifice._

Adam woke in the river, and for the first time in centuries Henry was not waiting for him. He send a note, informing Henry he was not dead, and a bouquet of flowers signifying his apology. Once again he set out into the world, silent and repentant and ever so alone.

vii.

Henry does not appear to have changed much, in the centuries since they last met. He stands like a Georgian gentleman, his curls proud against his lightly tanned face. His attire is sophisticated, his face clean shaven. He looks young.

His eyes flurry with emotions whenever Adam is granted a look at them. It takes him a while to speak, frozen as the work affair bustles around them. His companion is asking questions, and it takes all of Adam’s effort to answer them, to maintain some formality, to not just embrace Henry and tell him of all that has happened, ask him of his journeys.

It is only when they leave that Adam notices the wedding ring on Henry’s finger, matching that of Doctor Dawes. Adam is struck that he has been working beside her all this time, and not once did he know that her delightfully absent minded husband was his beloved Henry. But he knows that she loves him. It saddens him all the more.

Molly is not long buried when Henry turns up on his doorstep, trembling. Adam stands aside, and Henry walks in, his trunk of keepsakes trailing behind him. They do not say anything. They do not need to.

The world goes on.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are welcome.


End file.
